


duty / devotion

by pyrrhic_victory



Series: dangerous sentiments [4]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Autistic Julian Bashir, Cardassian Culture, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e01-e02 The Search, Saying I Love You, Secret Relationship, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victory/pseuds/pyrrhic_victory
Summary: Julian sees Garak die in the Dominion simulation, and realises something he probably should have realised months ago.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: dangerous sentiments [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576258
Comments: 26
Kudos: 244





	duty / devotion

Garak would have been irritated at being dragged out of bed past 0100 hours, but his sleep these days was elusive at best. The latest formulation of painkillers gave him even more fractured nightmares than he usually dealt with. 

When the doors slid open, the look on Julian’s face was urgent, almost frantic. 

“Doctor, I didn’t expect to see you so soon.” The computer had only notified him that the _Defiant_ had returned from the Gamma Quadrant an hour ago. He wouldn’t admit to anyone that he hadn’t been able to sleep at all for the past few days it had been missing. 

Julian said nothing, and was on him as soon as the doors closed, desperate, clinging to him. Warm hands were already burrowing under his shirt, running up his back and holding on tight. 

“I see you’ve ignored my advice about pacing yourself.”

Julian gave a sort of pained laugh and the kisses slowed somewhat. Lips pressed against his cheek, his jaw, then slowly, slowly down his neck until they stopped completely and he buried his face there, breathing shakily. This was not merely a carnal emergency, then. 

“I take it your trip to the Gamma Quadrant did not go entirely to plan?” 

The hands on his back shifted up, pulling him closer. He found being held didn’t make him as twitchy as it used to; at least, not by Julian. What could have happened? A crew member killed? Who? He was very fond of Dax, and O’Brien. But he took any death under his care very personally. It could be anyone. 

“I can be very distracting, if that’s what you would like.”

A broken laugh, and Julian pulled back enough to kiss him again, shifting his hands to cup his face.

“Is that what you need, Julian? A distraction?” 

He was staring, tracking over Garak’s face with painfully focused attention like he might disappear at any moment.

“I need you.”

The honesty of it floored him for a second. Until now these emotional gestures had been a dangerous risk he only allowed himself when his paranoia quietened to tolerable levels. But the look on Julian’s face now...Garak, bewildered by how serious he was being, let him take control. 

Clothes off. Normally he’d berate Julian for tossing them to the floor, but now they were silent, except for the occasional word of instruction. There was usually some back and forth, some light arguing, something to fill the silence besides heavy breathing. But this time there were just hands on him, touching every part of him with surgical precision, a body pressed closely against his. 

It wasn’t about him. It was about whatever had happened to Julian. 

He looked the way Garak felt when he looked at him. He was moving the way Garak wanted to move when he touched him - desperate, clutching tight like he was afraid he’d disappear if he didn’t. 

Sweat slicked along his scales from Julian’s hot skin and he drank in the thick scent of him on every breath. But he couldn’t lose himself in it. This was about Julian. He had to look after Julian.

Garak nipped at his throat, not hard enough to leave a mark but enough for him to feel a little sting, and Julian gripped harder and bit him back. He was desperate in his attentions, constantly shifting from place to place but never letting go, holding on, sinking his fingers in like he was trying to dig up something beneath. 

It burned. 

Afterwards, Julian rested his head on Garak’s shoulder for a long time. He didn’t slide back, didn’t move away, just lingered there, hot breath against his neck, sweaty hands pressed against his back. Garak let him. Usually he was quite fussy about cleaning up, but not now. Whatever had happened, whatever pain Julian was in, he needed this. 

When he raised his head again, they sat only inches apart on the bed, close enough for him to feel the residual heat rolling off Julian’s body. He kept looking into Garak’s eyes as though searching for something he knew he wouldn’t find. Garak couldn’t bring himself to correct him yet. 

“I can’t tell you everything,” he eventually said, giving up the search for now but still so close. “A lot of the report is classified. Though I expect you’ll know most of it already.” 

“I resent the implication, doctor.” 

Julian sighed and put on the usual expression of fond exasperation that came up whenever Garak even remotely implied he wasn’t a nosy and devious spy. 

“The Dominion put us through a simulation to see what we’d sacrifice to avoid starting a war. Almost the whole Alpha Quadrant signed a treaty with them. The Federation were going to give up Bajor, the station and the wormhole to Dominion control.” 

Fascinating. He stored that away for later. 

“That seems unlikely.” 

“You thought so.” 

“I was there?”

“Yes. You helped us, actually.” 

“Helped the Federation? That doesn’t sound like me at all.”

“I know. That should have given it away.” Julian smiled a bit, but the seriousness took over again. “We decided that the only way to prevent the Dominion taking over the Quadrant completely was to destroy the wormhole, and you helped us escape to the runabout. And then the Jem’Hadar shot you.” 

“Well, that’s what I get for playing the hero.” 

Julian was silent again, watching him. Searching. Close. His hair a mess, forehead shining with sweat. 

“I watched you die, Garak.”

“I see,” he slowly said, to buy himself some time. Was that what this was about? That was what had shaken Julian so badly? His _death?_ “Well, you’ll be pleased to note that I am not, in fact, dead.”

The look Julian gave him bordered on irritated, and would have been satisfying had this been another occasion. 

“I know that now. The point was that it made me realise something.“ Julian’s hand came to rest on his thigh, brushing the scars there with familiarity instead of tentativeness these days; not evocatively, just...intimately. He sighed, still close enough that Garak could feel hot breath against his shoulder. “You’re very important to me. I don’t think I’ve said that.” 

Garak shifted, leaned back. He needed a barrier here, some kind of distance between him and Julian; a learned reaction to intimacy. One he’d encoded in himself long ago, fighting his natural instinct to reach out and touch. 

“I mean- I think about you all the time. Not that I’m obsessed with you, or anything weird like that,” he quickly added. “I just like you quite a lot. You know?”

Garak stared at the man in complete confusion. He was so sweet, so uncertain. Like the only concern he had in the world was whether Garak was about to reject him for saying exactly what he’d been thinking for months.

“I take it you aren’t proposing to marry me?” he said, half as a joke, because he really didn’t know whether Julian was building up to something painful, or something very painful. Those were the only options in situations like this. “Forgive me, human relationships are somewhat complex compared to Cardassian ones.” 

“Oh! Oh my god, no, I wasn’t-“ Julian looked absolutely panicked and it was a bitter relief that he hadn’t intended that. “Uh, humans date for years before they get married. Some people stay together a long time but don’t marry at all. Uh. Not that I’d never marry you, but I mean- it’s a bit soon, isn’t it? Uh.” 

It was sweet, the way he rambled on when he was trying to explain himself without offending. 

“What I meant was- what I realised then was that I love you.”

The words hovered in the air between them long after Julian stopped speaking. He’d heard them before, of course, but always as an afterthought between strangers, or a declaration in a human novel. Cardassians were never so blatant, certainly not the ones he knew, not even Palandine. 

It wasn’t-

He’d never-

The first thought he had was just a voice screaming _why? How?_ For what possible reason could Julian Bashir love _him?_ After everything he’d seen? 

The second thought was that he knew this already. The looks Julian gave him, the care he showed for his pain, the way he accepted being with him in secret without hesitation when he could have had anyone else less complicated and alien that he wouldn’t have to hide away. 

But so long as nothing had been said, Garak could weakly pretend he’d just imagined it. Wishful thinking. He didn’t know what he’d wished for more: that Julian loved him as deeply as Garak loved him, or that Julian was just being kind, and saw this only as a diversion to be cast off when he found someone more appealing. That would have been safer than this.

He had to touch him, to soak in his warmth, because at least that he could understand. Julian stared searchingly as Garak brushed his hand along his jaw, traced the edge of the dark circles under his eyes. He’d been away in the Gamma Quadrant for over a week. What else had he seen in that simulation?

“I hope you know how foolish this is,” he said, not unkindly but fondly. Julian snorted. Garak’s elbow bumped against his lean chest when he lowered his hand. 

“Yeah. Starfleet officer and a Cardassian spy. Not exactly a match made in Heaven.” 

“You know where my loyalty lies.”

“Yes, Elim, I know your heart belongs to Cardassia,” Julian sarcastically said. Warmth filled him just hearing his name said so fondly. It had been years since he’d let himself feel anything so thoroughly foolish. 

“And yours to Starfleet and the noble cause of medicine,” he countered. 

“And despite those terrible flaws of mine, you’re still here,” Julian said, covering his uncertainty with a charming smile. 

Garak sighed. He felt the need to warn him of just how ill-suited he was to this kind of thing. He wanted to remind him of just how dangerous and cruel he could be, when he had to be. 

But Julian already knew that. 

“I am not an easy man to love. Politics is the least of it.”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “Well, that’s convenient. Neither am I. We already have so much in common.”

Didn’t he know? Had he no idea of how hard it was _not_ to love him? 

The instinct to push him away fought with the older, deeper, more dangerous instinct to pull him close and fight all external attempts to rip him away. Everyone who loved him ended up hurt because of it. Could he really do that to Julian, too? 

Julian tried to smile sympathetically. He must have seen the fear in his expression. 

“Garak- Elim, if you don’t feel that way, it’s really fine. You don’t have to lie. In fact, I’d really rather you didn’t.”

He was overcome with the absolute, blind panic of being asked to confess his true feelings about something, and deflected immediately. 

“Perhaps you need more time to think about this. You’ve only just returned from what sounds like a rather difficult experience-“ 

“Don’t.”

Julian sighed and slumped back, not looking at him anymore. 

He really didn’t know, did he? Garak couldn’t fathom being more obvious with his affection than he already had been. But Julian, intelligent as he was, was no good at reading people. 

“Julian?”

He looked up immediately. 

He pulled the sheets over his lap and raised his hands, trying to force them to stay steady, to run his fingers over the absent ridges around Julian’s eyes. 

He tried to take a steadying breath and it caught in his throat. 

“You’re right. I don’t have to lie.”

The first time they were together, that first night, Julian had looked at him in much the same way he was now. He’d wanted to know what Garak felt, and what he wanted from him. And Garak couldn’t bring himself to speak. There were no bugs here (he checked morning and night) but that didn’t stop the constant fear that Tain was listening to every word he said. Call it paranoia, cowardice, training, trauma; whatever it was, there was a lurking black creature in his mind that made him constantly afraid to just _say the damn thing_ in case it pounced. 

So he had done this instead: leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Julian’s.

He did it knowing that a human wouldn’t understand. 

He did it _because_ a human wouldn’t understand. 

Even if he wasn’t afraid, he couldn’t trust his own words to explain the depth of feeling he’d been guided away from all his life. This kind of sentiment had always been barred to him, expressed only in hidden gardens and shadows. This is what led him to be exiled in the first place. 

And here he was again.

Julian didn’t pull back. He kept their position, matching his breathing, eyes closed.

“You did this the first time. It means something, doesn’t it? More than it does to humans.” 

Garak pulled back with a sigh.

“Cardassians do not especially value romantic love as a thing in itself, as humans seem to. It’s considered selfish. Pointless. Or at least-” he didn’t want to be saying this, but Julian deserved some modicum of truth, some explanation of why he might never hear exactly what he wanted to hear. “At least, that is how I was raised. We are taught to value duty instead. That is the basis of our society. So love for us is a kind of duty. Or, if one is more optimistic, duty is an expression of love - for Cardassia first, then one’s family, or...well. Others. That is what this gesture signifies.”

It was a vast simplification of centuries of philosophical discourse, but sometimes that was necessary in cross-cultural discussions. 

Julian looked at him, puzzled. “It signifies a duty to the other person?”

Garak tilted his head in assent. This was already too much, too raw and exposed. He hadn’t allowed himself this much vulnerability in so long. 

“And duty for you is the same as...” Julian’s face came alive and glowed like he’d just figured out the ending of an enigma tale in the middle of a replimat debate, and then leaned back again, a bit sheepish.

“I’m glad I could educate you on Cardassian culture,” Garak said, trying not to lose his mind at the smile on Julian’s face. He pulled him closer again, hand in his hair. A human kiss. Something he would understand without an anthropology lesson. 

“Was that transparent enough for you, Julian?” 

“No, Elim, I don’t think it was. Could you repeat that?” 

He ended up back in Garak’s lap, one hand in his hair, kissing him and leaning back to smile beautifully, beatifically, and then kissing him again, then smiling again. He was warm again, not the burning, pressing heat of before but a comfortable pool of it settling inside him.

“I have a request. More of a demand, actually.”

“Oh?” The thought vaguely occurred to him that he’d grant Julian anything he asked for right now. 

“No more shoving me out straight after.” Garak bit his tongue and his displeasure must have been evident. “I know, I know, we’re still keeping this a secret. But there has to be some way for me to stay here, at least some of the time. And you have to stay with me, too.”

“Oh, do I?” 

“Yes. It’s the law, actually. Forbidden lovers required to sleep in same bed at least once a week.”

“Once a month. And Federation law doesn’t apply to Cardassian citizens.”

Lips beside his ear, a voice barely above a whisper. “It does when they’re on Federation space stations.”

“How unfortunate. It seems I have no choice but to comply.”

“None at all.”

Julian was smiling faintly, and Garak realised two things when he looked at him there, tired but glowing at the edges. One: his head didn’t hurt. Two: Julian looked happy. And even if he was incapable of that kind of feeling any longer, if all that was left for him was a few sparks of amusement amongst a lifetime of grey - seeing Julian happy, making him happy - that stirred something old in him. Something like contentment. 

#### ***

Garak’s quarters were warm enough that while he was in pyjamas, Julian could just cuddle against him in his underwear. It felt bizarre that after everything they’d already done, simply sleeping next to him felt alien.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d done something wrong tonight. It wasn’t unreasonable to tell someone you loved them after dating them for as many months as they’d been together, was it? It fit the usual pattern of relationships that he’d noticed. And he tried to keep to patterns. He tried to be average. 

He would say _I love you_ , and the person he said it to would either say _I love you too_ or they wouldn’t. That was the routine. But Garak hadn’t stuck to the routine. The feeling in that gesture, when he rested his forehead against Julian’s- it felt like whatever he was feeling for Julian was too much for him to say out loud. After that, his own admission just felt hollow, somehow. Like it was part of a formula he couldn’t break away from. 

Was that something else they’d broken when he was genetically enhanced? He knew now that he loved Garak. but like everything else in his life, it had taken something terrible and dramatic for him to realise how he really felt. And just saying it didn’t feel good enough, but he didn’t know how else to get it out. 

His arm slung out almost of its own accord and wound around Garak’s torso. 

He splayed a hand on his broad chest, rising slowly up and down. 

Heart beating beneath the surface. 

Counting. Always counting. 57 bpm. Cardassians have a naturally slower heart rate than humans. 

Alive. 

Whatever other people might say, having a near-perfect memory was often more of a curse than anything. It meant he could recall with absolute clarity how it felt to have Garak’s body go heavy and slump in his arms, and to see the bright humour die in his eyes as he crumpled against the wall.

He shuffled closer, pulled him tighter to his chest. 

Heartbeat, 51 bpm. Breathing slow. A sound somewhere between a hum and a sigh. His head shifted on the pillow. 

Alive. 

He’d come here in a maelstrom of panic and false grief, and thrown himself at Garak to try and fix it. The horror of his own mind being turned against him, bits of his life replicated so exactly that he hadn’t even noticed something was amiss until he woke up. 

“Elim?”

“Hm.” 

“Is this real?” He had no way of knowing. Nor did he know what Garak could say to convince him.

“I have no idea. But you’re warm, so I’ve decided that I don’t care.”

Julian did care. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. 

Except- Garak. 

If this was still a simulation, the Dominion would simply have had the fake Garak tell Julian that he loved him straight away, to lull him into a false sense of security. The simulation was good, but they couldn’t possibly replicate the fear in the real Garak’s face as he tried to explain what he felt without admitting to having feelings at all. They couldn’t possibly fake someone that complicated and confusing. 

That was real. Garak had apparently been devoted to him from the start, when he did that gesture that first night. Why? Because Julian saved his life? Would he really still love him if he knew that he was fake? 

He drifted, pressing his face into the muscled shoulder in front of him. 

Garak wasn’t good with feelings. Even worse than Julian, it seemed. This much had been established months ago. But he had them. He just didn’t like to admit it. He’d looked almost pained when explaining what that little forehead gesture meant- that love-duty concept that Julian found a little strange but very endearing from someone who prided himself on being unsentimental. 

He realised then that he understood the concept perfectly. In telling Garak he loved him- in hearing that he was loved in return- he had taken on a duty to do the thing properly. To care for him, to prove that he meant it with his actions when his words failed him and his feelings were unreliable. 

He’d thought about Garak a lot when he’d been trapped in that shuttlecraft with Sisko for days. That must have been part of the simulation too. But he’d felt it all as though it was real. He remembered it perfectly. But it had never happened.

The Dominion. The wormhole. The runabout being torn apart in the explosion. Bracing himself to die-

He jerked awake again.

“Don’t humans sleep?” Garak mumbled, voice heavy with tiredness. 

“Sorry.” 

Garak grumbled something indistinct, turned over and wrapped his arms firmly around Julian.

Oh. That was...nice. He curled up and allowed himself to be subsumed completely, so he could inhale the smell of him, feel him breathe, check his heartbeat. 48 bpm. Slow and regular. 

He drifted.

***

Julian slept. Garak couldn’t, not yet. Every time he got close, Julian would shift or his breath would catch and he’d be jerked back to the moment. 

He loved him. 

Julian actually said he loved him. Whether he truly did, or it was just a panicked response to the apparent trauma of seeing his death- that remained to be seen. Julian did have a habit of leaping before he looked.

He shifted so he could breathe in the scent of Julian’s hair. 

Odo likely kept some kind of surveillance on his quarters. If he’d been watching when Julian came in, he’d have noticed that he hadn’t come out again. Even if he wasn’t, and he was resting in his bucket after the Gamma Quadrant mission, he’d have a deputy watching now, or review the footage himself in the morning. 

Difficult. 

Odo frequently said he didn’t care for humanoid mating rituals, but he did care for station security, and he considered Garak a risk. He took that as a compliment, though he was, in actuality, less of a serious security risk than Quark these days. The constable probably wasn’t above blackmailing him for information on the Obsidian Order if he decided not to share the details of the relationship with station command immediately. 

Perhaps he could get away with saying that the doctor had simply come over for some drinks and fallen asleep on his couch. That was something humans frequently seemed to do, especially Bashir and O’Brien. But Julian would have to corroborate the story if Odo asked, and he wasn’t a good liar. 

Julian shifted, mumbling something. Garak went still, letting him readjust, and waited for him to settle in his arms again. 

If Odo believed the story, and they did somehow get away with this unscathed, they’d have to be very careful about how they proceeded. Julian was insistent about sleeping beside him more often. They could conjure some kind of monthly event where they drank together in their quarters in the evening and one of them slept on the other’s couch rather than struggle back home through the habitat ring. Normal male bonding activities, for single heterosexual men who didn’t share each other’s beds. 

Or he’d have to put his foot down about secrecy. Julian wouldn’t like that. Garak himself didn’t particularly like it. After a taste of this, he already knew how lonely sleeping alone was going to feel. 

There were times he admired the constable’s dogged dedication to his duty, and there were times when - as with Julian - it was incredibly frustrating. For the first time in his life, he was surrounded by decent men trying to do their duty, and there was no overlap, and no chance he’d get away from it unscathed. 

Julian’s hand slipped under his shirt and wandered up his back, snagging a few scales on the way up. 

“Careful,” Garak warned. 

“Sorry,” Julian mumbled, barely audible. “Love you.” 

Garak didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. 

No, he knew what he was supposed to say. He just couldn’t. So he sighed, rubbed Julian’s back and tugged him a bit closer. 

“Go back to sleep, Julian.”

Nothing. He was asleep already. 

He listened to every microscopic sound of rustling blankets and staggered breathing, adjusted his position to every tiny movement of the warm body cradled so trustingly in his arms. The smell of sweat drifted towards him every now and then; not unpleasant, because it was Julian, but grounding. Familiar.

He’d have to instruct Julian on maintaining their cover story in the morning, if it looked like Odo was likely to believe it. Garak was the intelligence agent, after all. It wasn’t Julian’s responsibility to come up with these things. 

For now, he closed his eyes, breathed in the comforting, comfortable smell of the man he was so thoroughly undeserving of holding, and tried to sleep. 

***

Reluctantly, Julian was awake. Even more reluctantly, he was alone. Tiredness pulled at him. 

The bed was empty, but the lights were still off.

How long had he been asleep? 

“Good morning, doctor.” 

He turned and squinted at the soft voice from the bathroom door. No matter how many times he told him otherwise, Garak still called him _doctor_ 90% of the time. It felt like a pet name at this point. 

He had clearly just got up, with hair in front of his face, his pyjamas rumpled. He was holding a strange device that looked something like a tricorder, and watching Julian with a wary look.

“Morning,” Julian mumbled, smiling at the sight, and pushed himself up. So that was what Garak looked like in the morning. He’d been wondering for months. Was it morning? “Computer, time.” Nothing happened. He blinked stupidly and glanced behind him at the control panel. He always forgot that Garak had disabled voice commands in his quarters. 

“It’s 0700. My apologies, I didn’t think it necessary to wake you just yet. You’re off duty this morning, and not due to report to Commander Sisko until 0900.“

Julian narrowed his eyes as he turned the lights up at the panel himself. “How do you know?” He asked, feeling like a parent admonishing a child for hacking secure Starfleet files on a space station. 

“You’d be surprised at the things one can pick up with a keen ear and an enterprising mind,” Garak said. “It may also have had something to do with you yelling at the computer to set an alarm before you fell asleep.” 

“I forgot!” Julian groaned. “Nobody else has the voice commands disabled.” 

“Oh, it’s only to save my own embarrassment. I dislike the computer listening to how much spice pudding I order from the replicator.”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason.” 

Julian glanced around the room for the uniform he’d thrown off last night. It was folded in a neat pile on the chair. It was such a small thing, stupid really, insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe, but he couldn’t stop himself grinning at the sight. 

“Something funny, doctor?”

“About last night-“

“Ah. Don’t tell me: you’ve come to your senses about the dangerous Cardassian tailor.” His voice was light, but he’d turned away to look through his closet, and the question had an uncomfortable reality to it. Maybe he did have some idea of the way Julian flitted between people, latching on in search of fulfilment and then falling away when he couldn’t find it. 

Julian slid off the bed. “Garak.” 

“Doctor.”

“I love you.” It wasn’t the most romantic setting, with the lights at 60%, at seven in the morning when they both had to get dressed and have breakfast and go to work. Knowing him, though, it was probably better like that. 

Garak froze. Maybe it wasn’t better like that. Maybe he’d said it wrong, maybe it came out too generic, maybe it really was too fast, oh, _shit-_ but then Garak just exhaled with a rueful smile and turned to caress his face. He often did this- ran his thumb over Julian’s eyebrow and cheekbone where a Cardassian’s eye ridges would be. 

“You’re a very strange young man,” he softly said. “Are all humans as ... upfront as you?”

“I don’t know. Are all Cardassians as elusive as you?” 

“Hm. I’d hope so. It is a trait we are taught to value.” He seemed to deliberate for a second, then stepped a bit closer and angled his face to rest his forehead against Julian’s like he had last night. Like he had on the first night. 

From someone who was so careful and calculating with every action, who spent so much of his time spinning words in fantastical arrangements, an entirely silent gesture had to be significant. There was a depth of feeling behind it that Julian didn’t think he properly understood. But he got the meaning plainly enough, and he owed him something in return.

He slid his arms around Garak’s waist and rested against him, pressed together from chest to stomach to thighs, face buried in his shoulder. Augmented or not, he hadn’t had much sleep for a week and it was starting to catch up with him.

“Did you really think I was going to change my mind?”

Garak sighed. “I wouldn’t blame you. We tailors can be difficult to live with.”

“I already knew that.”

“The first time I let you stay the night, you insult me in my own quarters.”

“I insult you everywhere else.” 

“Still. It’s considered rude.”

“Rich, coming from you.” 

He didn’t have the energy for much of a debate. He just closed his eyes and tried to take in the feeling of this, in the vain hope that it would block out the memory of the simulation. It didn’t work like that. But he could lose himself in it for a few precious seconds at a time. 

“Do you have to open your shop?”

“Unfortunately, yes. But I could be persuaded to take my lunch break in your quarters.”

He looked up at Garak again. In the brighter light, he could see a tired, sickly kind of look on his face. He suspected - though Garak was unhelpful and had yet to admit it - that either the headaches or the medication he took to control them were disturbing his sleep. And he looked worse for wear because of it. 

“Good. You can nap with me.” 

“Nap...with you?”

“It’ll be good for both of us,” Julian pressed. “You get your human hot water bottle, and I get my Cardassian pillow. It’s perfect.” 

“If you say so, my dear.”

He was getting good at this hugging thing. It just involved draping himself over Garak until he was comfortable and holding on tight. Garak wasn’t using both hands. He tugged the occupied one down and saw it was still holding the strange device. 

“What’s this, then?”

“It’s used to sweep for listening devices.”

Garak set it on a side table and embraced him properly, with only a bit of the awkwardness he’d had with it in the beginning. He felt safe here. He shouldn’t have, but he did. 

“I think I might have noticed if someone came in here planting bugs in the past few hours.”

“That’s what you think. But they could have beamed them in. Equally, we could have been drugged by a sedative released from the replicator while they were planted.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re paranoid?” 

“I’m not paranoid, you're just careless.” 

“Now who’s being rude?” 

He shouldn’t have felt safe here, with someone he’d probably be interrogated by Starfleet Intelligence for loving. Maybe he was doing this precisely because Starfleet wouldn’t like it. Some bitter spite in him about the fact that he had to hide what he was to be allowed to serve like everyone else. His existence was a secret, and so was the person he loved.

“If Constable Odo asks, are you prepared to offer a creative explanation of your presence in my quarters overnight?” Garak asked. “I suggest that you needed a distraction from your unfortunate mission, and so we were drinking together, and you decided to sleep on my couch rather than struggle your way home.” 

_Poor Odo,_ Julian thought. To have searched for meaning all his life, wondering for so long who he was and where he’d come from - and to then discover that his people, his family, were the dictators controlling the Dominion...he couldn’t imagine. Maybe the feeling was something like finding out he’d been genetically enhanced - the deep discomfort of discovering that he and his family were not at all who he’d thought and hoped them to be.

“I don’t think Odo was watching last night,” Julian slowly said. “Things happened in the Gamma Quadrant...he seemed rather upset.” 

“I see.” Garak narrowed his eyes. Julian could almost see him filing that information away for later. “Still. It’s best to be prepared.” 

Julian nodded reluctantly. “What did we talk about?”

“Shakespeare. I had to be inebriated to cope.” He took on a pained expression, like he was haunted by a tragic past. Julian raised his eyebrows rather pointedly at him. 

It was strange. Despite all the surveillance and paranoia, he really did feel safe here. He kept coming back, trying to figure things out. Trying to figure Garak out. 

His mind was engineered for solving puzzles. That’s also why he had a bad habit of getting too close to his patients. So it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to him that the most difficult, infuriating mysterious puzzle of a person on the station was the one he‘d become obsessed with. 

That was how his relationships usually went: giddy obsession that fizzled out the longer he tried to stick to the script, to be replaced with monotony before one of them took pity on the other and ended it. Palis was the only one who stuck it out, and they’d come out the other side of the slump still caring about each other. 

And then he’d broken up with her anyway. 

“I’m not good at relationships,” he found himself saying after a while. 

“I wasn’t aware humans considered them a competitive sport,” came Garak’s wary voice beside his ear. 

Julian sighed, and words started tumbling out of him faster than he could think through them. “I mean, I date someone. I love them. I do everything you’re supposed to do. I do everything _right_ , and yet somehow it still falls apart. I don’t want that to happen with us.” 

“Hard though it may be to accept, even you can’t do everything right.”

“I know that. I just don’t know what to do that isn’t _wrong_. What do we do now?” 

“Julian.” Garak pulled back, keeping his hands on Julian’s arms, looking at him oddly. “I admit that my experience with such things is more limited than your own, but is there some series of complex rituals we are supposed to complete before we're allowed to say we're doing this right?” 

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Julian sighed, though the words rang through his head and he realised that that was exactly what he had meant. “I’m not saying this right.” 

“That scares you, doesn’t it? Not being right.” 

How did Garak read him so effortlessly? Of course he was afraid of not being right. He was engineered to be perfect and when he wasn’t it felt like all that violation had been a waste. Julian slumped.

“I don’t want to cock this up, that’s all.” Especially not now he knew Garak felt like he had some kind of duty to him. He was determined not to fail in his own.

“You have a great talent for overcomplicating simple things, and oversimplifying complicated things,” Garak said, in a tired, fond way. His hand drifted up Julian’s neck to settle in his hair, sending a tingling feeling along his scalp in its wake. “Though I must preface this by once again reiterating my inexperience, it’s my belief that these things work best when one isn’t constantly afraid of making a mistake.” 

Julian hummed. He was probably right. Maybe he ought to think of this like surgery. Care and precision is required, but too much anxiety is a risk that has to be compartmentalised away because it leads to errors. 

“You haven’t done this before?” He asked after a while. Julian assumed that since Garak was so much older than him, he must have had more experience. Then again, he’d been consistently cautious about every aspect of their relationship so far, and he had told him once that the Obsidian Order frowned on sentiment. Maybe he hadn’t been allowed relationships even when he was in their good graces.

Garak was silent for a significant moment, eyes averted.

“Once.” 

His voice was empty of the wistful reminiscence Julian took on when he thought of Palis. That single, raw monosyllable was a great big siren wailing _something bad happened here_. 

“Well.” He patted Garak’s arm, clueless as to how to deal with that. “We’re doing alright so far, aren’t we?”

“I’d like to think so. Although there is one thing.”

“What?”

Garak leaned close to him like he was about to kiss him, but then pulled back with a smirk.

“One of us needs a shower.” 

“Is that an invitation?” Julian asked, as Garak turned back to his closet to examine his many clothing options. There was a chaotic array of colours and fabrics, mostly in gold, green, black and brown. If he had an organisation system, Julian couldn’t see it. 

“It wasn’t, but you seem to have made it one anyway.”

“How rude of me.”

“Dreadfully.”

He leaned on Garak and peered into the closet. 

“I like that one,” he said, pointing out a dark green jacket with brown zig-zag patterns on the front that he always thought made him look good. 

“You do realise that your fashion sense is so far removed from common sense that any recommendation you make is more of an insult than a compliment?” Garak said, and Julian nudged him.

“Paranoid _and_ insulting,” he muttered. 

“Changed your mind about me yet, doctor?” Garak glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, smiling. It wasn’t a real question this time. 

“Not yet. You’ll just have to be especially nice to me, to make sure I don’t.” Julian leaned in and kissed his cheek, and didn’t pull back again. “I think I’ll have that shower now.” 

“Is that an invitation?” Garak innocently asked, not leaning back either. He was close enough to see every tiny scale that made up the ridges on his face, and the little flecks of grey in his blue eyes. They shifted in the light too quickly for him to count.

“Only if you turn the water temperature down to non-fatal levels. I’d like to keep my skin intact, thanks,” Julian said, edging closer. 

Garak tilted his head. If he shifted even a centimetre, their noses would bump together.

“Insults _and_ a lukewarm shower in my own quarters? I’m starting to wonder whether you Starfleet officers are as noble as you make yourselves out to be.”

Julian smiled and tilted his head to match. It only took the slightest movement to kiss him, the kind of lazy, soft kiss that was perfectly suited to seven o’clock in the morning when neither of them particularly wanted to be awake. 

“Come on, then. I’ll warm you up.”

Garak gave him a fond look, which Julian saw so rarely that if he hadn’t had a perfect memory, he might have suspected he’d imagined it existing in the first place.

And then he got the strangest feeling, something he never, ever thought he'd be able to do: he knew what Garak was going to say before he said it. 

“You always do.”

Not only that- he knew exactly what he meant by it. 

It was only a brief moment, an exchange of looks, and then Garak was following him to the bathroom, complaining about how fragile humans were and how they didn't understand proper temperature. But that moment of complete understanding was so overwhelming after a night of confusion that all he could do was follow him and listen. 

"I love you too," he said out of nowhere. Garak blinked at him, half-undressed, caught off guard, then lowered his head in an awkward nod. He wasn't used to this. Neither was Julian. He didn't know what the right move was. He didn't know if he was saying the right things. 

But apparently, that was alright. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] duty / devotion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368951) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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